March 2017 Archives

March 3, 2017

There are two types of websites: static and dynamic. Static websites do not change, and the best example is the typical corporate website. The website is mostly text and images with a contact form.
Dyna
mic sites are like applications; examples would be sites like Facebook, Gmail. Anything that generates something different based on user input. These dynamic websites run on a scripting language which fetches data from a database and displays it to the user. Here are the most popular server-side languages used today:

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language that at the time of writing is used by three-quarters of websites running today. PHP is open source which is the primary reason for its popularity. There is a huge online community that supports and helps continue development. PHP is mostly used by smaller websites, but the largest footprint is from WordPress sites.

Java

PHP runs mostly smaller lower-traffic websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there is Java, which runs most of the high-traffic, high-performance sites. The two most notable examples of Java use for large scale websites would be Apple and Amazon, which both use Java web frameworks.

Python

Python is not as popular as PHP and Java but also runs some popular websites like Yahoo Maps, Shopzilla, and even the National Weather Service. It is a high-level language, which is meant to produce code is that more readable. This is possible thanks to a larger library of pre-existing functions that programmers can use for development.